Some 30 real-life English into Korean simultaneous interpretation were
analyzed to examine whether English into Korean interpreters attempt
to utilize the SL pauses for their TL production as was proven by
previous studies. Interpreters were shown to be involved in more
complex cognitive processing than speakers in that the average length
of pauses left by interpreters was statistically longer than that of
speakers(p
= 0.000). The fact that average length of between-sentence
pauses was longer than that of within-sentence pauses, both for
interpreters and speakers (p
= 0.000), appears to mean that longer
pauses are necessary for planning of
a new utterance. Accuracy of SI
showed positive correlations with the number of within-sentence SL
pauses (r
= 0.59,
p
< 0.001), with the average length of SL pauses in
interpreters' listening alone portion (r
= 0.52,
p
< 0.001), and with the
number of SL pauses in interpreters' listening and speaking portion (r = 0.52, p < 0.01). A “pause distribution index", calculated from the 30
samples, was 1.46 showing that 46% more SL pauses were located in
interpreters' listening and speaking portion than in interpreters' listening
alone portion.